


Parallel to You

by isntitcrazy



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Awkward Flirting, Cell Phones, Comfort/Angst, Confessions, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Hurt, Feels, Flirting, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, Long-Distance Friendship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Nightmares, No Smut, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Not Beta Read, Pain, Phone Calls & Telephones, Pining, Pining Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Secret Crush, Secrets, Slow Burn, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Unrequited Lust, Wrong, you'll see I guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28783173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isntitcrazy/pseuds/isntitcrazy
Summary: Dream finds himself completely consumed by his best friend, despite being an ocean apart. In fits of despair and furious yearning, Dream can't see anything except George's dark eyes gouging holes into his psyche. Why can't he just be alone in his own mind, for once in his life?In other words, Dream was drowning. George could breathe. He loathed him for that.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 13





	1. Swallow

**Author's Note:**

> Oh no it's a dreamnotfound fic. (I hope my friends don't bully me too hard (you know who you are)).
> 
> I actually don't ship them I just had this very angsty idea and was like "wow! that work perfectly for dnf!" and I tried to ignore it but it didn't work so here we are. I need to spit this thing into existence before it completely consumes me.
> 
> I would say this hurts me more than it hurts you, but that would be a lie.

Everything that George did had it’s way with Dream. George was an all-consuming, human-engulfing being who had somehow managed to ensnare Dream and pull him into himself without even knowing it. But Dream knew it. He was ever-so aware of George’s talent to swallow, but he didn’t think anyone else could feel it.

Everything about George lingered. The scent of cologne on his letter from England—a cologne that Dream could only assume was worn by George. The words he spoke into his mic, especially the ones that only went to Dream’s ears during their late night talks when everyone else had left the call. The sound of his laugh, or the curve of his sweet smile, or the way he’d fiddle with his hoodie or turn red when he got embarrassed and sink down in his chair.

Even worse still, it was the worst parts of George that hung heaviest in Dream’s mind. Not that he wished to call any part of George bad, but there were parts of him he favored above the rest. Like the words meant only for him, or the scent that had clung to that envelope.

Dream wished he could forget his one and only fight with George. His one and only true fight with George, for playful arguments didn’t count, whether on-stream or in private.

But there was a day when George had been mad at Dream. Truly, unapologetically mad. He was upset by the younger’s lack of filter, upset by the way he let every passing thought spill from his lips like vomit. Dream swore he could remember every word George had said that day. _“It’s like you spit venom, Dream. But you can’t even taste it.”_

George’s words had resonated through his speakers that night. It was deafening. It made Dream’s hands freeze on his keyboard, pausing his in-game character in the middle of his task as he was stuck listening to George fume. Dream swore he could feel George’s red. The vermillion seeped through his monitor like blood, coating his screen and desk and hands with thick anger. _“Your brain can’t do anything but think for yourself. Do you even care about other people?”_

 _Yes, George, I care about you._ His mind screamed for him to say it. Begged for him to open his mouth and just spit it out. Like venom. Or vomit. Or some other unpleasant v-word, one that George could add to his cache to bring out next time he got mad enough to ooze red.

George never apologized. He never uttered the word sorry in Dream’s direction for that fight, for his own venomous words that had dripped from his pink lips. Perhaps it was because Dream couldn’t muster up an apology of his own in the heat of the moment, and George was only returning the favor. Perhaps he had already forgotten about the fight. That was what Dream made himself believe, as George never brought up that night again.

The ignorant normalcy made Dream feel sick. He felt like the two lacked something, and there was a palpable gap in their relationship for months following the incident. Dream supposed that time heals all wounds. And if it didn’t heal them all, it certainly healed that one.

But Dream was haunted by his best friend’s sick truths. They swallowed him whole. They grabbed him by the ankles and held him underwater, held him until he kicked and screamed and inhaled, letting the fluid fill his lungs in mere moments. Dream longed to forget it all, but he couldn’t. They stuck to his mind like glue.

Then there was another day burnt into the backs of Dream’s eyelids. A late night in London when George had texted Dream slews of nonsense, none of his words quite making sense, only just enough to be understood. Dream had spent his evening and George’s night trying to talk sense out of his friend, and he took what he could get.

Dream still had all those messages. They were buried somewhere in their endless stream of words, engulfed by months and months of other conversations, each one feeling more pointless than the last. But nothing branded Dream’s psyche quite like the nonsense of that late November night. He didn’t even need to comfort himself with the thought of those buried messages, because he had memorized every word of them.

George kept calling him Clay. He misspelled it every time, but he kept calling him Clay. Dream liked it. He always had. He liked the way the name sounded on George’s lips more than anyone else’s, liked the messages from _Georgie_ containing the four-letter word that was his.

George hadn’t called him Clay since that exchange. It hurt so bad.

In Minecraft worlds, when George would even dare to utter the material clay, it made Dream’s heart flutter. Sent bolts of rose up his spine and his sternum, made him feel _loved_ and _wanted_ and like he was _seen_. Then it would all come crashing down in the obsidian ache it was, crushing the pink spirit into everything hopeless. 

There were streams that Dream would re-watch, or see clips of circling the internet, streams where Dream knew for a fact that he _wasn’t all there_. It felt obvious to him. It made his guts itch with worry, worry that everyone knew and could tell and thought he was pathetic, or weak, or something bad and ugly because he wasn’t acting all cocky and hyper like he was supposed to.

All his friends would ignore it while they streamed. Dream liked it that way. He didn’t want his onyx ache to be the center of attention. And the over-eager laughter of his excitable friends was a lovely distraction, pulling his mind to better places and better things.

Even George’s voice wasn’t completely crushing. George was engulfing like the sun. Sometimes he swallowed in that warm, sunshine way, on a day when you want the warmth of the rays. Where’s it nice and happy and comfortable, like laying in the grass in early June. But sometimes he was scalding, all his words UV rays as Dream tried helplessly to keep himself from getting burned.

Dream preferred it when his friends ignored his struggles. He’d like it even more if they didn’t see them at all. He wasn’t quite sure if they did, but he hoped they were oblivious. Everything would be easier that way, and Dream would never have to spill his guts.

Except for Sapnap. Sometimes, he would ask Dream if he was okay. Ask why he had suddenly plummeted so far down, suddenly fallen so far from everyone else. Ask if he was feeling alright because he seemed off that day. Ask if there was something bothering him.

Dream had a list of excuses cycling in his head.

_“I was up late last night editing.”_

_“It’s really hot out today."_

_“Patches hasn’t been eating.”_

_“I don’t feel too well.”_

_“My mom’s visiting soon.”_

Feigned words always got Sapnap off his back. Got him to spit out the correct response, like _“go to bed early tonight”_ or _“turn on the AC”_ or _“feel better soon!”_ Dream almost found it funny how much Sapnap cared for him. He was younger than the blond, so there was a part of Dream that felt like he should be the one telling Sapnap to get enough sleep or take his cat to the vet.

But that wasn’t how it was, was it? Dream was comforted by someone who was still a teenager, swallowed by a man from another country, and surrounded by friends who couldn’t see his struggles.

Dream wished some things were different.

~

The night was hot. Strangely, unfamiliarly, hot. Dream was uncomfortable. Sure, he lived in Florida, but he had never liked the heat. He didn’t like the cold either, though. He seemed to hate the weather no matter where he slept or what clothes he wore.

And tonight, in nothing but boxers and a haphazard sheet, Dream hated the weather. It made him writhe in bed, kick his legs in and out of his sheet in a mess of _too hot_ and _not safe_. He needed that comfort layer, needed the thin grey cloth to cover nearly all of his body, or else his racing mind would fill with images of darkened figures and something that crept in the night.

It was a childish fear. Dream knew that. But he was thankful that it could all be quelled by a thin, grey sheet instead of something more embarrassing, like a nightlight or a stuffed animal. All he needed was his sheets, and his pale skin covered by cloth.

Dream had grown too tired to notice after two long hours of restlessness. He fell asleep with his right leg outside the sheet.

 _Cold_.

Dream was cold. And it was dark. Completely, overwhelmingly, dark. But it was familiar. He swore he knew this kind of darkness, recognized it like he had seen it a hundred times before.

Then Dream opened his eyes.

Blue. The world around him was shatteringly blue, the shade filling Dream’s eyes to the brim in blinding azure. 

He blinked. Once. Twice. Thrice.

It grew manageable.

Then there was weight. It was heavy and cumbersome, and it was all on Dream’s ankles. He tried to fight it. Dream kicked, he flailed, he writhed helplessly in the air where he hung, trying hopelessly to wrangle himself free of the grip on his calves, the unwanted capacity slowly crawling up his legs and farther.

Then, Dream was covered. He was swallowed completely, engulfed, swarmed, and taken. It was a matching shade of lapis, but it was salty and poisonous. It was water, it was thick, salted water, like the ocean but built from regret.

Dream wanted to yell. He wanted to scream into the sky, to beg for answers, to call for help to be let go. But to open his mouth underwater would be suicide. So he could only kick and whimper, noises of displeasure sounding from flat-lined lips.

The weight pulled harder at Dream’s feet, so he turned emerald eyes down. He squinted, trying to focus his gaze into the deep blue below, looking for answers to the weight that pulled him down. If he couldn’t get out, if he couldn’t get up, then he at least wanted to know what dragged him down.

It was George.

Dream was sweating when he woke up, but it wasn’t from the heat. His skin was cool to the touch, sheets kicked off completely, sitting in a messy pile on the floor. Dream breathed heavy, heavy and deep, thankful for the taste of fresh air in place of the sting of saltwater.

And his chest. It felt heavy, heavy and full. Like he was being strangled. Or swallowed. Or drowned.

~

“Have you heard from George today?” Dream heard the words before he registered that he had spoken them. His voice was soft and flowing like chiffon, a warm blanket around his own shoulders.

Sapnap responded without much hesitation. “No, why?”

“I don’t know,” Dream sighed, his tone losing the silky touch. “I haven’t heard from him all day. Maybe I’m worrying too much.”

Sapnap laughed. “Yeah, dude, I think you are.”

Dream couldn’t help it. He was haunted by George, haunted by everything about the man. He lingered and watched the younger attempt to exist without him there. It’s like the little George in Dream’s head was taunting him, teasing him to “ _just forget about me already.”_ But Dream couldn’t.

He felt empty without thoughts of George. Devoid and soulless. Forced to focus on the surged feeling of drowning in his chest, heavy and spreading like liquid agony. Dream didn’t want to admit something like he _needed_ George. Dream didn’t want to need someone. Though the emerald in his chest told him that he _did_ need George, needed him like children needed their mothers. Needed him like the sand needed the sea. And his need was shaded green, a color George’s eyes couldn’t see.

“Hey,” the lilted British voice pulled Dream from his thoughts.

“George!” Sapnap called. “Dream was just talking about you.”

It almost felt like ice. A spike of an icicle drilled straight through Dream’s weak heart, spreading frigid cold through every inch of his chest. It froze the drowned saltwater in his lungs. _Sapnap wasn’t supposed to tell him that_. He didn’t blame Sapnap. He blamed his useless mouth, for he had vomited something out again.

“Oh, really?” George asked, voice almost teasing. “Did you miss me?”

“Uh—” Dream stuttered, hands looking for something to do. He found cold agony in his sternum. The character froze in the game. “Yeah. I guess.”

“You okay?” it was George, not Sapnap. 

George’s flowery voice, suddenly tangerine in hue, seeping through Dream’s monitor just as the vermillion had done when they warred. But the two days were not the same. Dream let the tangerine swallow him, embrace every inch of his skin in tight, feel-good warmth, not stifling and aching like the shades of red always were.

It erased the heave in his chest, if only for a moment. Made him feel light and floaty again, as if he could soar like the stars. Dream was infinite.

“Yeah,” Dream said, tongue heavy with honey-colored words. “I was just worried about you. I hadn’t heard from you all day.”

George’s words paled in color. “Oh.”

Dream’s chest weighed down again, cold and water-logged. Did he say too much? Was he spitting up again? Did his tone equate to one of those cruel v-words that George had stored in his cache?

A shaky breath came out of Dream’s speakers. “You worry for me?”

Tangerine flooded his senses again, just as heavy and quick as it was before. It was as if it had never faltered.

“Of course,” Dream let the smile twist his lips. “I care about you, George.”

Dream’s lovely bath of orange was interrupted by an exaggerated gagging noise from Sapnap. The world let Dream bask in the secondary shade for just a moment longer, let him swim in the comfort of its warmth until it faded into nothing.

“You guys are being sappy,” Sapnap complained.

George laughed. “Sorry, Sapnap.”

Dream laughed, but he couldn’t even feign an apology. He wasn’t sorry, and he missed the tangerine.

Dream waited for more orange. He waited and waited, for the rest of that call, for more of George’s pretty words to flower like they had before. He waited for the cure to his tight chest, waited for the fix that was all the right things in the wrong ways. But he only got trickles of daffodil, dripping out of his monitor and onto his desk. There wasn’t enough of it to encase Dream in the warmth. There would never be enough of it.

The blond almost wished that George had never bloomed in the first place. Had he not, then maybe the daffodil would’ve been enough to cover Dream. Had he not, then Dream wouldn’t have more words to store in George’s nice column, words to return to and replay like they were caught on video.

“Dream, how’s Patches?” Sapnap asked, his words hollow and white.

“Oh,” Dream stammered in surprise, barely out of his tinted thoughts. “She’s good. Asleep right now, but good.”

Sapnap laughed slightly. “That’s good.”

“Yeah,” Dream echoed back, but his words were hollow like Sapnap’s. 

A deep-sounding breath came from Dream’s speakers, followed by the distant creak of a chair. The sounds gave Dream pause. He knew it was Sapnap, but it all implied something to follow.

“I think I’m gonna go,” there it was. “I’m, like, really tired.”

“Bye, Sapnap!” George said, watching as Sapnap left the Minecraft server.

“Go to bed, Sap,” Dream joked, tone light and free, something like a cloud in the sky.

Sapnap laughed. “Yeah, yeah.” Dream could hear the eye roll from Florida. “Talk to you guys tomorrow.”

And Sapnap left the call. _Then there were two_. A comfortable silence sat between Dream and George, but comfortable didn’t mean invisible. Dream could feel the quiet between them, could reach out and touch it in the air, could grab it and hold it like it was real—because it was.

“Dream?” a drop of daffodil hit Dream’s black desk.

“Yeah?”

Concern edged at the yellowed tone. “Can I ask you a strange question?”

Dream leaned away from his mic, taking a deep breath. _A strange question?_ He wondered what that could mean. He even stopped playing the game, leaning back in his chair to look up above him. He studied the peeling of the white paint, the peaks of beige and grey, the complete imperfectness of his water-damaged ceiling. It reminded him of himself.

“By all means.”

“Do you ever, um…” George paused, hesitant. “Do you ever feel like you’re drowning?”

Dream spit before he could swallow. “All the time.”

“R-Really?” George stuttered, surprise lacing his tone.

Dream still couldn’t feel the daffodil, but he knew it was there. Pooling on his desk, yellow striking on black, painting the surface like a bumblebee equivalent.

“Yeah,” Dream furrowed his eyebrows. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I,” George paused again, “I keep feeling like that. It won’t go away.”

“It won’t go away?”

Dream knew the feeling. He knew it all too well. It was like George, George and his tangerine and vermillion. George and his drips of yellow. George and his everything, his absolute everything, smothering Dream and pulling him into the sea.

“I had a dream last night,” George said, speaking carefully. “Where there were weights tied to my feet. And I was in the ocean, and I couldn’t swim up.”

 _Wait_. “Me too.”

“What?”

“I’ve had a dream like that, too,” Dream said, voice startled and distant. “Last night. I was drowning. Drowning in—” Dream swallowed. _In you_. “In the ocean.”

“Oh,” a pause. A floral-scented pause. “Did it ever go away?”

Dream was struck by confusion for a mere moment. _Did what go away?_ Then, “The drowning?”

“Yeah,” soft, summery, sweet. “The drowning.”

Dream considered honesty. He considered lying. He weighed both options in his head, pitted them against each other on a scale, watched it teeter back and forth until it came up even. _Even_. Unhelpful and tinged. 

Dream chose honesty. “No.”

“Really?” there was no surprise, only yellow. All yellow and swallowing.

“Really,” he confirmed, flicking at his nails behind his head. “But it’s always like this.”

“Do you have the dream a lot?”

“Every few years. Then it goes away again.”

“Oh,” George thought for a second. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Dream attempted reassurance, but he feared he missed the mark. “The feeling. The drowning one. It…” he paused, considering.

George was quick to prod. “It what?”

Dream cleared his throat. “It goes away sometimes. When something really nice happens. Just for a moment, and then it comes back.”

“Oh,” George took a deep breath. “Then I hope something nice happens to you soon.”

“You too,” Dream says softly. “I hope something nice happens to you too.”

“The dream,” George urged. “You said you have it often.”

“Only every few years. It’s been happening as long as I can remember, so I guess I got used to it.”

George only hummed in response to that. Dream pictured him nodding his head, eyes half-closed and movements lax. He pictured an orange hoodie, one just the right shade in Dream’s eyes. Hopefully it would look nice for George, too.

“It’s…” a pause. Consideration. The weighing of next words. “It’s a nightmare, right?”

“Yeah,” Dream answered. “Feels like it lasts forever. Like you’ll never get out.”

“Yeah,” the word was all breath. All breath on George’s microphone. “I think I’m gonna go to bed.”

Dream furrowed his eyebrows. “What time is it in England?”

George laughed. It was soft. It was friendly. It was daffodil. “Don’t worry about it.

“Okay, Georgie,” Dream said with a smile. “It’ll all be okay. You’ll breathe again soon.”

“Okay,” George responded. “Thanks, Dream.”

Before he could say ‘you’re welcome,’ Dream’s computer dinged with the sound of George leaving the call. Dream sat up, moving his hands to the mouse to close Discord. He gazed faintly at the pool of yellow that had formed on his desk. It was pretty under the light of his monitor, until it disappeared.

Dream’s heart was warmed by flowered words. Yellow and gold in hue, all-encompassing but in the old, welcomed way. But there was still a twinge of dark in his soul, growing from a tiny pinprick to an engorged hole from the moment Dream’s ears lost the sound of a British voice.

The sense of drowning rose in his chest again. Without George and his tangerine, Dream was walking on pain. Without George and his flowered words, the world was pitted against him.

The silence of the room was nauseating. Dream wanted to get up and leave, but he couldn’t will himself out of his chair. Couldn’t pull his head out of his hands or his elbows off his desk. He could only sit, sit and bask in the terrible silence, feel the sick, unpleasant feeling rise in his abdomen to meet the strangled drowning.

George had snuck his way into Dream’s mind. His words had bore holes in his skin, red and hot and open like wounds, sick and festering. It haunted Dream incessantly, just as he haunted himself.

Dream is a ghost like George is a ghost. But George is banging cabinets and TV static, and all Dream has ever been is silent.


	2. Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream finds something beautiful in the depths of his mind. Or perhaps it's terribly grotesque.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a tad shorter than the first one but I didn't want to prolong it unnecessarily. It felt finished, so I finished it. There is still much more to come.

Dream recalled being told that he had an overactive imagination. He remembered his parents telling him so with smiles and laughs, patting him on the shoulder and assuring him that it _wasn’t a bad thing._ Dream found that it was a bad thing.

Perhaps an intensely vivid mind―one capable of dreaming in technicolor―was something to be envied. Dream recalled the emerald jealousy in George’s tone when he told him of the dynamic thoughts that swarmed his brain. Recalled the furrow of his eyebrows over webcam, his tongue on the inside of his teeth, the _“I wish I could think like you.”_ Dream had laughed it off and attempted to convince George otherwise. He didn’t think it worked.

But Dream had a brilliant mind, didn’t he? He was intelligent and stuffed with vibrant thoughts, thoughts he could tend into flowers, grow and watch bloom right before his very eyes. Dream had always liked showing George his idea-bouquets, displaying the rich color that he had a feeling akin to love for. He liked the bright smiles he always got in return, the ones he could _hear_ over voice calls.

Though recently, Dream had found that it wasn’t all fantasy blossoms. There were days when his thoughts wouldn’t grow, wouldn’t bloom or sprout or bud. When Dream was stuck kneeling in the dirt, raking nails through soil and dirtying his hands, silently begging for something beautiful. 

It was wretched. Sick and wretched. Like the world was playing some kind of cruel joke on him. Flowerless days always ended in tears, dampening his pillow until he fell asleep. And he would dream of forests and massive trees, ones so large and mysterious they felt stifling.

Dream learned to loathe the vivid imagination. Because recently, in all his flowerless days, his mind was hounded by thoughts of George. He found him in the flowers, too, but those were all the best parts of things. The laughs and smiles and cologne-scented envelopes. The deep conversations where Dream spilled his guts in the good way, the way where George listened with open ears and didn’t make fun of him―only splayed himself out in return.

George’s dirt was thick and muddy. And when Dream knelt in the umber slop, feeling the wet soil slick through his pants, George was always there with him. On his knees like Dream. Dirtying his hands like Dream. Getting mud stuck beneath blunt nails, bumping fingers with the blond, laughing under his breath while he asked why there weren’t any seeds.

The brunet lived in Dream’s fragile mind. And when the two dug through soil together, Dream never got anything done. He would fall asleep to find those same strangling trees, that same overcrowded forest, then he’d wake to a half-dead phone and too many missed messages. Then it was a long day of apologies, of excuses, of half-assed attempts at convincing Sapnap he was fine and dealing with the scarlet ache he felt at the sound of George’s voice.

Dream wondered sometimes if there was a garden in George’s head, too. If Dream ever appeared to help push dirt aside and plant seeds. If George’s garden grew flowers of duller colors, petals coated in protan. 

He was pretty sure he knew the answer. _No_ . There was the outstanding thing that George had never even seen Dream’s face. _How could he be haunted by a man he’d never seen?_ But even without that, if George had something beautiful of his own, he wouldn’t have been so viridian about Dream’s. But Dream was jealous of George’s mind, too, for it wasn’t swallowed by forests and gardens, and it seemed like he could think straight.

Dream stared at his damaged ceiling. What was it like to be un-harrowed? To live without haunt and bloom? To find simple beauty in things, to not read too much into every situation, to not be engulfed by vermillion or entranced by a drip of daffodil.

His phone was ringing.

It vibrated against his nightstand, buzzing him free from his mid-afternoon thoughts. It buzzed three times. _He still wasn’t dressed yet._ A fourth. _He hadn’t eaten today._ Fifth. _He never left his bed._

Dream picked up his phone midway through the sixth ring. The honey in his chest wished for it to be George. Pictured him sitting in his chair with the phone up to his ear, eyes dancing around his room as he waited for Dream to answer.

It was Sapnap.

“Sapnap?” Dream’s voice was hoarse and spent. It sounded like he had just been screaming, but he hadn’t said anything at all.

Dream fell backwards on his bed. He closed his eyes, engulfing himself in darkness as he waited for Sapnap’s voice.

“Hey, Dream!” his intonation fell immediately. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” It was a lie. “Why’d you call me?”

“Oh, okay,” Sapnap paused. “I just wanted to check up on you. No one’s heard from you all day, man.”

“Don’t you think you’re worrying too much?” Dream teased, mimicking the way Sapnap had prodded him yesterday.

Sapnap laughed. That was good. “Whatever, man.”

“Hey, I’m just saying, don’t have a double standard.”

“It’s not a double standard!” the other defended. “You said you’d stream today and you didn’t.”

Oh, yeah. He did say that. “Yeah, I said that like last week.”

“Are you not a man of your word?” It was half-sarcastic and teasing. Dream could picture the lopsided grin on his friend’s face.

“Shut up,” Dream laughed. It was bright and alabaster. He hadn’t heard the sound in his own voice in what felt like forever.

And there was a pause. A silence over the phone line, filled only by the softest echoes of two people breathing. Sapnap held his breath. Dream’s ears felt empty, and he opened his eyes.

“Dream,” he sounded far too serious. His tone was slate, colorless, and heavy on Dream’s middle.

He fluttered his eyelids. “What?”

“Are you not telling me something?”

 _A lot of things._ He tried to make a joke of it. “That’s very blunt.”

Dream’s laugh sounded much duller, tinted with ebony and jet. It made him bite his lip, hyper-focused on the uneven breaths coming from the other line.

“I’m serious.”

Dream spit his venom. He tasted it. “I know.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

Dream shrugged. Sapnap couldn’t see it, couldn’t even hear the rustle of Dream’s bedsheets beneath his shoulders. 

“You wouldn’t understand.” That was true. Dream knew it was.

“That doesn’t matter,” he sounded exasperated, prodding. “I’m worried about you, man.”

“I’m fine,” Dream insisted. “I swear, I’m alright. You don’t have to worry.”

“Now you’re having a double standard.” 

Dream laughed. Sapnap hadn’t been joking. “I don’t like when people worry about me.”

“Then tell me what’s wrong!”

“I can’t!” Dream took a shaky breath. “Look, just forget about it. I’m fine.”

“Dream―”

He hung up.

~

Sapnap called three times in succession. Dream drowned himself in the sound of his vibrating phone, allowing the repetitive pattern to fill his ears unending. He rolled over in bed, stared at his bedroom door as if searching for something. He wasn’t sure what it was he was looking for, all he knew was that he didn’t see it there.

Then Sapnap texted him. Dream didn’t read it. But his phone kept going off, the long extensions of attempted phone calls turning into the short buzzes accompanying a message. Dream remained with his back turned to the nightstand, facing away from his phone. He kept searching the closed door.

Maybe he was looking for a way out of the garden. Out of the mud and away from George. It had begun to rain in Dream’s head, slicking up the soil even more than it already was, coating him and George in a thick layer of water. It made their hair stick to their foreheads. Clumped their eyelashes together. Made George’s lips all slick and pretty, gathered in droplets on his freckled cheeks, ran down his neck in thin streams of crystal.

It made George look so… so… _beautiful._ Dream nearly hated that more than fighting over Discord calls. Hated it more than his dirtied hands and emptied garden. Hated it more than all of George’s worst parts, the pieces that haunted his soul in the way that ached scarlet.

George was beautiful. And like this, when he was slick and covered in rain water, he became completely alluring. Dream didn’t even want to look at him. Something in him feared that if he dared to look at George now, he would find that he couldn’t look away.

And Dream was right. The moment his eyes found George’s form, still kneeling in the dirt and digging, he could no longer focus. His muddy hands froze in their place, half-buried in an empty garden and only sinking deeper. There was something about him, about George, that made Dream wish for his lips. His rain-wet lips, soft and pink and smiling, hiding all the secrets of the world behind them.

Then those brown eyes met Dream’s. And the way they were positively glowing―as if they were identical to the water on his face that reflected the sun’s faint light―it was serene. George was sublime in every sense of the word, trapping Dream in an awe-induced state despite knowing it was all a figment of his imagination.

 _“Clay?”_ The name sounded so delicate on his lips. _“Clay, you’re staring at me.”_

But George laughed. He laughed because he wanted Dream to stare at him, in the way that couples do, when they savor the other’s gaze and swim in the appreciation. It would be lovely to swim with George, but he seems to always be trying to pull Dream underwater.

George laughed again, light and perennial. _“Clay!”_

Dream submitted to his unearthly desires. He found them, found George’s efflorescent lips, found them in all their rosy glory and took them with his own. He tasted of rain water, mouth slick against Dream’s, teeth clashing together in a messy haste while they laughed against each other in divine enjoyment.

One of Dream’s hands found George’s dampened cheek. His dirtied fingers were slippery against his skin, surely coating his face in a layer of grime, but George seemed to pay no mind. He only pushed himself harder against Dream, kissed him with increased vigor, sought to cover him in rose-colored wonderment.

Even George’s kisses were all-consuming. They swallowed Dream whole, devoured him like a predator to prey, made him a bloodied victim of nature as he lay dead in the forest. But it gave Dream an insatiable craving for it, deep in the pits of his stomach, spreading through his ribs and sternum and infesting his heart with rapacious, merlot _need_. It was nothing like the thick vermillion. It couldn’t even compare to the trickling daffodil. It swallowed in a way completely unique to itself, different from the welcome tangerine of reality.

It was like nothing Dream had ever felt before. All he knew was that he wanted to be consumed by it.

 _Swallow me._ He seemed to say. _Swallow me whole, George, eat me alive._

All his thoughts were coded garnet, glittering in the sun. And George’s mouth was stunningly orchid on his, like there was something regal to the way he moved his lips. 

Dream pressed back against George. Moved a hand to push on his chest, to feel George as he crawled into his lap, pinning that outstretched arm between their abdomens and straining the muscle in a strangely welcome way.

Their lips parted, then reconnected. Parted, then reconnected. They inhaled each other’s desperate breaths, drank in the other’s presence, conversed like lovers through locked lips. Dream cried to be devoured. George whimpered to be held.

And when they broke away―opened their eyes, found the other’s gaze―it was just as mesmerizing as the kiss had been. George’s umber was swallowed in red, a thick shade of cardinal that swirled through his irises like blood in the water. And Dream’s eyes, though he could not see them, he could feel the tendrils of lapis, a color that George saw in light against browned yellow, and Dream felt utterly _seen._

The surge in Dream’s chest matched George’s brilliant eyes. And when he finally broke their gaze, he found them sitting in a bed of flowers, the muddied dirt finally soft and only the right amount of damp. The rain still drizzled down on them, in that sickly romantic way where it bounces off their skin and flecks their cheeks with glimmer.

And the flowers were beautiful. They were blossomed and vibrant, every color of the rainbow surrounding them in haste. Dream was happy to see flowers again. Happy to be tangled up in George, consumed by his scent and presence and eyes, surrounded by that cologne he had ingrained and the shades of beauty that belonged to the other.

 _“The flowers are pretty,”_ George spoke softly, still breathless, but as if treading carefully around the man he had just kissed. _“I’ve never seen this place like this before.”_

Dream hadn’t either. And again he was merlot, again he was rose and ruby and delighted. His blood surged in the brilliant way that he craved more of every second. He hoped his eyes were still as alive as George’s were, lost in the dancing cardinal.

 _I love you,_ Dream swore. _I love you in garnet hues._

Dream was elated to find that his desires were colored red. Until he remembered that George can’t see red any better than green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have an update schedule. Should I have an update schedule?


	3. Pretty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream talks to George in earnest, and perhaps he says too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is very much all-dialogue, but I like it. It was fun to write.
> 
> And I haven't updated in a thousand years which is an oops. I am trying, I just kinda... didn't open the doc for a while lol. I'll try staying better on top of it. I very much want to write this fic, I'm just busy.
> 
> Oh and Sapnap's kind of a bitch in the beginning, but I promise he'll get better.

Dream had to force himself to get out of bed the next day. Drag himself up and to his feet, movements sloppy and thick like molasses, shoulders heavy and heaving and difficult to perform.

He hadn’t slept well. He had another nightmare, one with George in the water again, but Dream actually got to look at him this time. It wasn’t a flash of pale skin in the wide, deep blue, or a fleeting glance before he was jolted to awakeness.

The wretched dream had let him stare, let him lock eyes with George’s umber and be drowned in his sweet gaze. 

He looked just as gorgeous as he had in the garden. 

George was just as pulchritudinous in his very existence, efflorescent enough to drive Dream to his computer to find better words to describe the boy. Nothing felt good enough anymore.

It was stark to dream of being haunted, to discover fear in the sight of all things in unconsciousness, to be haunted by the ghost of someone he couldn’t get rid of but still find them so  _ entrancing. _ George’s beauty was effortless, his existence was pretty, and he both blossomed and was blooming beneath the water.

Dream had a suspicion that there was something about the water with George. The dampness of his face, slick and merciful even under the thick drowning of saltwater. Like his mind had  _ wanted _ Dream to absorb every last fraction of George.

Dream struggled to join a call that day. It took him forever to find the chair in front of his desk, to open a Discord window on his computer and dance his cursor around the screen. Though he loathed to admit it, it only got harder when he noticed George’s icon in the call.

But he told himself that it was too late to turn back. He had already opened it, allowed the little green circle to enclose his icon, slip himself into the  _ active _ column on the screens of all his friends.

With hesitance, he joined the call. Felt sickened by the familiar  _ ping _ sound that emitted from his computer speakers, plugged in his headphones and put them on, felt red in the bad way—carmine, not garnet.

There was George, and there was Sapnap, and there was Bad. No one else. It felt too… nostalgic, was the only way he thought to describe it. He craved a newer presence.

“Dream!” Bad greeted, voice bright and excitable. “Where were you yesterday? You said you’d stream, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Dream responded. “Something came up, sorry.”

It was strange. Sapnap and George weren’t talking. Their voices had fallen to silence the moment Dream joined the call, he heard the drop of their final sentences in his first moments of arrival.

Bad had stopped talking, too. Accepted Dream’s apology and assured him not to be sorry at all, asked if he was going to jump on the SMP with the rest of them.

Dream didn’t respond. Of course he had joined the call to play with them, but he couldn’t move his fingers off the keyboard. To his mouse, force himself to frolick the cursor around and open Minecraft. He only sat in uncomfortable silence, heavy and anchor in the way it hung about his room.

“Dream, you alright?” Bad prodded, the worry prevalent in his tone. “Are you gonna join?”

“Sorry,” Dream apologized again. “I guess I’m just…” He hesitated for a moment, considered himself for too long.

Bad prompted him to continue with a hum. “Hm?”

Dream’s gaze refocused on the darkness of his Discord window. He had a message from Sapnap.

“Nothing.” Dream shook his head, though it wasn’t like Bad could see him. “Just forget about it.”

There was hesitance in his opening of the message, strewn with ebony as he finally mustered his hand to the mouse beside him. The message wasn’t very long, but it wasn’t very nice, either.

_ How come you’re lying to everyone? _

Dream didn’t want to type a response. 

He broke the silence in the call, a silence that had arrived in heavy tension.

“I’m not lying.”

George’s voice filled Dream’s headphones. “What?”

Dream’s eyes fluttered shut, leaning back in his chair.

“Dream,” Sapnap said, voice low and heavy with shade. “That’s not…”

Dream couldn’t help but be a nuisance. “Not how you wanted me to answer?”

“Are you guys having a private conversation?” George asked, voice lilting and sweet and utterly  _ tangerine. _ It was like he couldn’t read the room, and Dream liked that.

It was cute.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sapnap insisted. “Dream’s just being weird.”

“Sap, don’t be a prick,” George joked, and Dream swore he could hear the roll of his eyes.

Bad jetted in quickly. “Hey! Language!”

“If anyone’s being a prick, it’s Dream.”

“Why are you mad at me?” Dream asked. “Did I do something?”

“You keep ignoring everybody,” Sapnap retorted. “Falling off the face of the earth. It’s annoying, you never answer anyone for, like, days. Is it really that hard?”

Dream winced. “Yeah.”

Sapnap didn’t seem to accept it. “ _ Why won’t you tell me what’s going on? _ ”

“I told you yesterday,” Dream said quietly. “You wouldn’t get it.”

“I don’t care.”

Dream gritted his teeth. “Then how come you want to know so bad?”

“Guys,” George attempted, his tone having lost every sense of the sunset. “Don’t fight, please.”

“Yeah, you guys never fight.” Bad’s tone hadn’t quite lost it’s lilt. “What’s going on?”

“Sap, just drop it,” Dream insisted. “It’s nothing major. Just forget about it.”

Sapnap wouldn’t quit. “Clay.”

The name made Dream wince. He never called him that,  _ Sapnap never called him that. _ He was jet and dark and ebony, shadowed by everything he hated and just a little bit more.

He didn’t like that name on his friends’ lips. Unless it was George, but George never called him that. Not anymore, at least.

“Nick.”

“If it’s not that big of a deal,” he spoke slowly, condescendingly, like a threat that was far too scary, “then why can’t you say it?”

Dream shrugged. No one could see it. “It’s stupid.”

“Why do you keep so many secrets?” Sapnap prodded. “I swear we tell you everything, and you offer nothing in return.”

“Sap,” George tried. “You’re being inconsiderate.”

“What, do you know something?” Sapnap directed his fury to George, voice thick in Dream’s headphones. “Does Dream talk to you? Tell you all his secrets?”

“No,” George answered. “But, unlike you, I’m not bothered by it. Dream’s his own person, he can keep all the secrets he wants.”

The silence was near-deafening. Too loud, too weighty, too difficult to exist in. Dream missed the sweet orange on George’s tongue, missed false realities where they kissed in the rain. In the world he got, George was like this—alabaster, soft, and defensive. And too many miles away.

“Whatever,” Sapnap said finally. “Dream, are you gonna join?”

Dream sat up in his chair, forced a half-smile that no one could see, tried to laugh himself through heavy pessimism and turn everything into a joke. “Will you quit bitching?”

Bad didn’t say “language,” though they all paused in waiting.

“Yeah,” Sapnap answered. “Sorry, Dream.”

“You’re fine."

And he was fine, truly. Dream meant it from the depths of his soul, Sapnap didn’t have to worry. They had known each other for so long, there was no reason to cling onto grudges and hold his friend over-accountable.

So they played. They milled about the SMP and got useless nonsense done, hung out with each other from so far away, off-stream and just to have fun.

Dream was glad no one had been live. Fighting with Sapnap wasn’t exactly magnificent stream material.

Bad was the first to go. Rat started barking louder than usual, high and squeaky enough to be heard through his mic. Then Sapnap left, too, claiming he had things to do and logging off with too many goodbyes. He gave Dream another apology, too, assured the older that he really meant it, and promised not to be so petty and obnoxious anymore.

And then there were two.

Dream and George, alone on the call. They sat in silence for a few long moments, Dream’s ears filled with the soft sounds of George breathing, sat a little too close to his mic. They were both still on the server, but neither of them were doing anything.

Dream stood silently near the spawn, George was off somewhere else. Dream wasn’t sure. He couldn’t quite remember.

“Dream?” George asked, soft voice breaking the silence.

“Hm?”

“You’re okay, right?”

Dream paused for a moment, struck suddenly by the pink in George’s words. They weren’t quite like anything else he had said, not anything Dream could remember, anyways.

Rose. Sweet. Pretty. Like George.

They called for honesty, so Dream told the truth. “Not really.”

“Oh.” George paused. “What’s wrong?”

“Just nightmares,” Dream answered. It was only half-true. “They mess me up pretty bad.”

“Haven’t gone away?” It was infinitely blush and sweet, so much so it threatened to melt Dream where he sat.

Dream sighed. “Not yet.”

“It’s ironic,” George joked, the pink darkening close to vermillion. “Dream being plagued by his dreams.”

Dream laughed. He had never forced something so hard. “Yeah. Ironic.”

“Dream?” All the pink came flooding back in an instant, swallowing Dream in the pretty blush-sweetness of it all.

He sunk back in his chair, let his neck be engulfed by the soft fabric of his hoodie, closed his eyes and basked in the pretty perennial beauty of it all. The sweet sublime nature of  _ George. _

“Yeah?” his voice had never sounded so soft.

George didn’t say much despite his prompting. He only whispered out a single word, a soft little “Okay.”

“Hm?”

George took a deep breath, audible through his mic. Even a stressed hyperventilation sounded rose in color, hued sweet and all-consuming in Dream’s ears.

“Nevermind. Don’t worry about it.”

Dream opened his eyes. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” There was a pause. “Would it make you feel better to tell me about your nightmare?”

Dream tried to sit up properly, but he felt unstable and heavy, shifty in his movements. “Yeah. I think that would help.”

George quickly left the Minecraft server, Dream watched the notification roll up at the bottom of the screen. Dream followed suit, leaving the SMP empty and his eyes caught on the Discord window. 

He watched George’s icon, sat right next to his. He almost wanted to ask for facecam, but he kept that desire stifled, deep at the bottom of him—never to be released.

“Okay,” George said softly. “I’m listening.”

Dream swallowed nervously. “It was just… the same as last time. I was drowning, again. You were there, again.”

Rose disintegrated. “I was there?”

_ Fuck, fuck, he had said it out loud. _

Dream shifted uncomfortably in his chair, did everything but up and leave the call entirely—though he’d admit that he certainly wanted to.

“Dream?” The word edged vermillion, a color Dream had grown to hate.

Dream spoke slowly, croaked out the word from the back of his throat in a scratchy, dark answer. “Yeah?”

“What was I…” George paused. Dream could hear him shift in his seat. “Tell me. About the dream. About me.”

“I don’t know,” Dream lied. “You were there. I remember your face. You looked…” George was always right, Dream spit and never swallowed, “pretty.”

Dream expected hot fire, he expected the seeps of red to drip out of his monitor and encase him with vice-strong grip. He expected the worst possible outcome, one tinged with red-orange and nearly as stifling as the dream itself. One with terrible v-words and unfortunate lost feelings.

Instead, everything was pink and tangerine, painting Dream’s screen and desk a sunset, one demanding his utmost attention.

“Pretty?”

Dream stuttered for a moment. Searched for the right thing to say, digging through the depths of his mind like he did in the garden.

He only found a single word, buried shallow in the dirt. “Pretty.”

“Can I…” George hesitated. “Can I ask why?”

“Why you were…” Dream couldn’t bring himself to say the word again.

George’s breath was chiffon and soothing, dripped out in stark white against a hot, flaming sunset. “Yeah.”

“I said I was drowning,” Dream confessed, feeling every word on his lips tangibly. “Then I saw you. All… all, wet. And shining. You were so pretty. You’re always so pretty, George.”

The breath in Dream’s ears was sharp and surprised. Inhaled in quickness, startled deep into the fire of it all. Dream stared at his monitor with intent, as if looking at George’s Discord icon would somehow summon the Brit to show himself.

“You…” George breathed deeply, orange and mesmerizing. “You think I’m… pretty?”

“How could I not?”

Another shaky breath. Another drop of sweet rose in the sunset, enriching the painting on the top of Dream’s desk.

“Dream.”

Dream smiled to himself. “George.”

“Don’t play with me.” George took another shaking breath.

“I’m not, promise.” 

“I…” he hesitated. “I don’t believe you.”

“Turn your camera on,” Dream urged. “I wanna see you.”

There was a moment of dead silence, of complete quiet that hung like iron in between them. Dream looked at his desk, all swirling and colorful and lurid. He heard shifting from George’s end, the clicking of a mouse and hands on his desk.

George’s camera turned on. It blinked to life, filling Dream’s vision with the sight of George’s room, with George leaning a little too close to the camera so Dream couldn’t see much of his face.

Then George leaned back. Fell into his chair, blinked at his webcam as if batting his eyelashes at Dream, drowning the blond in a storm of a thousand wishes.

Dream bit his lip. “Fuck.”

George’s eyes grew wider, mouth falling open in another sharp breath.

“Is that good?”

“You’re so pretty. Even without the water, you’re so pretty.”

George’s eyes fell away from the camera, his hands falling into his lap as he shifted uncomfortably. He played with the headphones on his head, bit his lip with nerves and stuttered over the start of a sentence.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?” Dream asked, cocking his head to the side. “Does it make you uncomfortable?”

George’s eyes danced around his room, but they never found his camera. “Not in a bad way.”

Dream smiled, small and happy. He savored the sunset of George’s speech, spread himself out in his chair to feel it everywhere he could.

“Good.”

“Was I…” George hesitated, gaze finally finding the camera again. It felt like he could see into Dream’s soul. “Did I make the dream better, Clay?”

It was so, so orange. So pink, so white, so pretty and perfect. Dream’s heart fluttered. He had missed it in every sense of the word, missed that name on George’s lips so much that it hurt to hear him say it again.

“I’ll tell you if you call me that again.”

“Clay?” George was seeking confirmation, but it drowned Dream in sweet ultramarine.

“Yeah,” Dream sighed. “That.”

“You…” George never finished his sentence.

“I missed it so much, George,” Dream confessed. “That name with your voice. I missed it.”

George didn’t say anything to that. Only let his eyes wander about his monitor, almost looking as though he thought staring for long enough would bring him Dream’s face. It wouldn’t.

“Yes,” Dream said suddenly. “You made the dream better, George.”

“Oh.” George took a shaking breath, one that shivered his entire body, visible enough for Dream to watch it happen. “I… I’m glad, then.”

“Me too,” Dream agreed. “I like having you in my dreams.”

_ Even when you’re trying to drown me, George. I like having you in my dreams. _

“I even had a different dream yesterday, too.”

Dream chose to leave out the part where it happened in the day. Confessing to a daydream made it feel too intentional, even if it had all been subconscious.

He savored George's sweet panic. The visible shift of his face, the loss of his gaze on the camera again. George was so, so pretty. Dream wanted to stare at him forever.

“Was I in it?”

“Of course you were. It was a good dream. Better than any I’ve ever had.”

Dream had found the worst part to be when it had ended. Being forced to let go of the sweeter reality, the picture-perfect one he had painted for himself where he had George all to himself.

“What happened?”

“We… We gardened together. And it rained.”  _ And we kissed. I liked it, so much. And I want it so bad. _ “You look so gorgeous in the rain, George.”

“I don’t,” George shook his head, lips twitching in lilted laughter. “You only think so because it’s fake. If you really saw me in the rain, you wouldn’t think so.”

“Should we test that theory?” Dream spit before he thought, filterless in his words. “It rains a lot in Florida, y’know. And I think your eyes would look pretty in the lightning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy I have so many plans for this fic.


	4. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream feels finite and colorful. George seems limitless and too far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! 
> 
> I apologize for taking a thousand years to update, I keep intending to be faster but I never am. I have many plans that I want to use, and this chapter finally has one of the conversations I was so desperate to write. It lived at the bottom of my document in a draft for a while, and I'm glad I got to use it!
> 
> I will make a claim to post chapter five soon, but we'll see how that goes lol. Maybe if I hold myself to it it'll happen.

“It rains a lot in Florida, y’know. And I think your eyes would look pretty in the lightning.”

George was wide-eyed and still as a statue. Dream watched him so intently, staring closer than he swore he ever had. He watched, waited, and expected him to move.

He almost asked if George was still there, caught up in worry of frozen monitors or cut-out Wi-Fi.

He didn’t need to.

“It rains a lot…” George paused, rolled his bottom lip behind his teeth. “It rains a lot in England, too.”

The tone George used was joking, though the way he bounced the spin in his swivel chair was nervous. Dream watched George’s dancing eyes, his attempted smiles that kept falling flat.

“I mean it, Georgie.” The nickname made George halt all his motions. “I want to see you. In person. In the rain. Real.”

“Why now?” George asked. “Why are you asking _now?_ ”

Dream shrugged. George couldn’t see it. “Felt right.”

George looked completely away, as if his gaze was caught on his bedroom door. 

“Dream.” Dream wished he’d said Clay. “Can I call you?”

Dream raised an eyebrow instinctively, shifted in his seat. “On the phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Now?”

“Please.”

Dream hesitated. “Sure.”

George left the call in a hurry.

Dream was almost concerned, and the seconds following the exiting _ping_ in his headphones felt like a thousand eternities. He closed Discord himself, brought his monitor back to his desktop and all the apps displayed on it.

Then his phone rang. He answered halfway through the first ring, stood up and threw his headphones on the desk and searched for his earbuds on his nightstand. 

“Dream?” George sounded the same, sweet and rose.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Dream responded, fumbling with headphone cables, phone caught between his shoulder and his ear. “Why’d you want to move it?”

George took a breath. “It’s better this way.”

“I can’t see you.”

“I know.”

Dream got his headphones figured out, finally laid on his bed and placed his phone on his chest.

“Too flustered?” Dream smirked slightly, feeling light enough to joke.

George laughed. It was soft, chiffon, even. “Shut up.”

“It’s cute,” Dream said earnestly. “You’re cute, Georgie.”

George’s inhale shuddered. It made Dream smile. 

“I thought I told you to stop doing that.”

Dream laughed lightly. “You definitely didn’t.”

“Okay, then I’ll tell you now,” George said, the roll of eyes seemingly audible. “Stop it.”

Dream laughed again, eyes fluttering shut. “I mean it.”

“Don’t compliment me anymore.”

“What, you don’t like it?” George didn’t answer. _“ Georgeee .”_ Dream drew out the syllables, narrowed his eyes to match his teasing voice, prodding the brunet enough to make him whine.

“Don’t do that, either!”

“Fine.” Dream relented. “But only because I actually want to talk about you visiting.”

The silent moment was eternal. George’s breath was unsteady. Dream writhed in his bed, not moving quite enough to make an audible rustle of his sheets, but enough to make his muscles feel useful.

“You’re serious about that?”

“Of course I am,” Dream insisted. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” George answered quietly. “Sometimes we joke about that stuff.”

“Yeah, but only when Sap’s around,” Dream said. “I’d never joke about this alone. With you.”

“You really want me to come to Florida?”

Dream sighed, the relief in the breath mixed taut with frustration. “Yes.”

“Can I…” George paused, hesitated. “Can I think about it?”

~

Dream wasn’t going to insist too hard. He wasn’t going to prod George for answers that night, beg him to pick now instead of later. Refuse to give him time to think, to consider, to mull it all over.

Dream couldn’t say he didn’t _want_ to insist, but he knew better than to be pushy. So as much as he wanted to beg and plead, to see how many words it would take to convince George in finality, Dream bit his tongue. He bit his tongue and let the topics change fluidly.

But he didn’t stop thinking about it. He let George’s colorful words flow through his head, almost in one ear and out the other. He let the luridity of the hues paint him in haste, broadened brushstrokes cold on his skin. He could only muster those soft, small answers that are a tinge unsatisfying.

The _“yeah”_ s, the _“sounds cool”_ s, nothing conversational or withstanding. But George didn’t say much about it, content to let Dream sit on his bed and swim in pigment. Content to let Dream attempt to wander back to the garden in his head, though George couldn’t say he knew of its existence—because he didn’t.

Dream wanted to see George so bad. All the whites and oranges reminded him of that, leaving him stuck swimming in his bed sheets—both dressed too much and not enough—dreaming himself a reality where George was there with him.

In a perfect world, George was in the bed with him. In a perfect world, they were draped across each other, and George could paint Dream’s skin blue with his fingertips. And they’d gaze at the azure tints, muse over the beauty of a color they could both see.

But if Dream wanted to be realistic, then he would admit that he’d be happy to even share the house with George. Subtle knowledge that the brunet was out in the living room, or in the kitchen, or sound asleep in the guest room. Knowledge that he was _here,_ and all Dream had to do was get out of bed if he wanted to go see him. 

However, George was an ocean away. And he could only stroke Dream from afar with titian for now, words directed not directly at the blond but merely at his open ears that dared to listen. Dream couldn’t even hear what he was talking about, so lost to his own fantasies.

But Dream was busy, busy searching. He found a violet ache in his ribcage when he looked there, in search of something pretty. He wanted to find that garden again, the one where it rained George’s skin pretty-wet, the one where there were blossoms instead of empty seeds. But all he found was hurt—terrible, beautiful, thick and purple.

Dream hurt with thought. _What if George didn’t want to see him?_

It felt so easy. Like George had lied his way out of the conversation, placed the idea on pause for infinity. “Taking time to think about it” meant nothing but “no.” It was only a cover-up, a way to put off direct answers, a way to save Dream’s skin and keep him hopeful with prospect.

Arguably, that was worse. Infinitely worse. It was _false_ hope, empty and built on nothing, keeping Dream stuck in limbo while he waited for an update that would never arrive. He was trapped in a lose-lose situation. 

Never bringing it up again would keep him stuck in wondering, but to prod would be inconsiderate.

So he tried to stifle it. Perhaps he was being irrational. Why would George lie to him, anyways? Coming all the way to a different country to meet a man whose face you didn’t know was a big step, of course he needed time to think.

But there was something in the amethyst that Dream had never felt before. There wasn’t enough _time._ And what little time they had was slipping through their fingers like grains of sand, so little and easy to lose track of. They were losing time, and wasn’t like they had much of it to begin with.

Violet spread through Dream’s rib cage like poison. The echo of George’s voice still rang in his ears, faint and mesmerizing. Dream heard a voice he didn’t recognize in the edges of his skull, monotone and unfamiliar.

_“When are you and George going to meet up?”_

He knew where it came from. Donations prodded, Tweets insisted, Twitch chat begged. Dream and George would always laugh it off, and Dream would always be the first to say _“Not sure. But we have plenty of time.”_ Dream always meant it. He always, always meant it.

They had plenty of time.

Dream had known George for years, but there was never any pressing need for them to see each other. No demands for Dream to show George his face. It had been loose and casual since the start of it all. And every time the prospect of visiting showed itself, they would smile in lilt and reassure each other that patience was the best option.

But now, Dream felt different. He felt orchid in his bed. There wasn’t enough time. George had to come _now,_ there was no later anymore, only this moment and this moment only. George’s soft voice in Dream’s headphones, new prospects hanging heavy in the air, and hope strung out on promises to return to the subject.

“Dream?” George’s voice finally managed to break the violet, jolting Dream conscious where he lay. “You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Dream responded, voice thin and nearly invisible.

George laughed softly. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for like, five minutes.”

Dream longed to hear that accent in person. “Sorry, just thinking.”

“Maybe you should go to bed,” George said in earnest. “It’s late there, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” Dream shifted, knocking his phone off his chest by accident. “I like talking to you, though.”

George laughed again. “You’re not even talking.”

“Well, yeah.” Dream narrowed his eyes at the water-damaged ceiling. “But I like listening to you. Your voice. It’s nice.”

George groaned in annoyance. “I thought we were through with this.”

“Through with what?” Dream laughed, a smirk teasing the corners of his lips. “With me complimenting you?”

“Yes!”

“But I like your voice, really,” Dream insisted, hellbent on making the boy understand. “It paints me all sorts of colors. I wish you could see them.”

Dream could sense George’s confusion through the line, hearing the shift of his desk chair beneath him. “Paint?”

“Well.” Dream paused. “It’s hard to explain, but you paint. My desk, and my computer, and sometimes me.”

“Is this a colorblind joke?”

“No!” Dream said quickly. “It’s not a joke at all. You’re very… I don’t know.”

There was a moment of silence. Dream found the worst of it to be that it was clear. Not even grey or painful, but completely empty until George spoke again.

“What colors?”

“Huh?”

“What colors, Dream?” George took a shaking breath, his nerves evident. “What colors do I paint with?”

“All of them,” Dream said softly. “Yellow. Orange. Pink. White. All the colors, but never blue.”

“Never?”

“Or green. Rarely green. Only sometimes, and it always hurts worse because you can't see it.”

“How come?”

“Well, I was thinking,” Dream started, “while you were talking—about you coming to Florida.” He could hear the apprehension in George’s breaths when he mentioned it. “And in my… my, well—fantasies, for lack of a better word, you painted me blue.”

The silence was deafening, and it was voided again. Dream swallowed thickly, though that didn’t mean he’d quit spitting.

“It’s like you’re saving it.”

George was silent. Dream held his breath in anticipation, awaiting the worst to come crashing down on his head. Vermillion, his least favorite color, but he waited for it.

That was not the color he found. He found daffodil in George’s curiosity. 

“Dream, what color am I?”

“What?”

“When you think of me,” George said. “What color.”

“Blue’s your favorite, I know that,” Dream admitted. “But you’re a sunset, aren’t you?”

“A sunset?” George questioned. “I can’t see those well, Dream.”

“Yeah,” Dream agreed. “But you’re pretty, and you won’t let me tell you so.”

“Why’d I even give you an opportunity,” George complained with a sense of joking in his tone, though it was buried in rose.

“I don’t know, maybe you secretly like it.” Dream let himself joke back. “You want me to call you pretty. Tell you how you paint my desk all tangerine, and that I like when your voice goes all rose for me.”

George scoffed playfully. “Now you’re just talking nonsense.”

“That’s fine.”

There was finally a hued silence, though it was white and devoid of brightness. George’s breathing had grown heavier in the past few minutes, and Dream had closed his eyes.

“What color am I?” Dream’s voice was calm and wrapped in lace.

“What color are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” George paused. “You’re green, aren’t you?”

“No.” Dream laughed. “What color is Clay? Like you’re a sunset, what am I?”

“Oh.” George was soft. Dream thought it was cute. “Then you’re blue. Clay’s blue. The brighter shades, not indigo or grey-colored. You’re so, so blue.”

Dream’s next inhale shuddered. George had sworn to barely understand, but he seemed to have it perfect in his head. He said all the right things every time, pretty and _ultramarine._

“I’m blue?” Dream’s words were soft-spoken, barely whispered loud enough for George to hear.

“Of course you are.”

~

It had never been so difficult for Dream to fall asleep. He put his phone on silent and tossed it beneath his sheets the moment George had hung up, not even bothering to get up and shower or change or any of it. Dream only rolled over onto his side, shut his eyes tight and attempted to drift away. 

He craved a dream of George. It was all he wanted in that moment—George’s face in his head. And he seemed to have lost the garden somewhere along the way, every corner of his mind blank and colored with nothing.

Dream thought about George painting him blue, thought about George _calling_ him blue, hung up on the fact that he had confessed to sunsets. His mind was a mess of thought and color. If it were truly a painting on canvas, Dream feared he may light it aflame.

It was too hot to sleep. Too hot and too stuffy, but Dream’s irrationality feared a lack of cover. So he wrapped himself tight in the sheets.

And Dream hadn’t realized that the heavy, drowned feeling had vanished from his sternum until it came back again. It came back stronger than it was before it had left, crushing in weight as Dream tried to fall asleep. And it was purple again. George’s blue on his skin hadn’t lasted long enough. It had been mixed with something darker, something crimson, left to drown Dream where he lay.

He cursed George for haunting him, and perhaps that was what locked the boy so deftly into his dreams that night.

When Dream finally fell asleep, George drowned him again, pulled him into the depths of his subconscious. George drowned him again, iron grip on his ankles, his hold a sick vermillion—but when Dream looked down and met his dark eyes, they were filled with love and all things sweet. Undeniably rose, the grip dipped in white and drained of orange.

Dream opened his mouth beneath the water, attempting to call out to the man beneath him. He kicked and flailed, but he never looked away. He was afraid of losing George, of losing the sweet pink look in his eyes, of losing the tiny thread of the moment they had going between them, even if the truth of it all was that George was killing him.

George spoke. It was difficult to hear, sound waves stuck in the deep water, but they reached Dream’s ears all the same.

 _“You’re blue.”_ It was pretty to hear it all again. Prettier when George was all slick with saltwater. _“You’re so, so blue.”_

But nothing gold can stay—nothing _blue_ can stay—and all the best parts of it were bound to float away. George’s face fell emotionless, lost it’s drip and color, more true words permeating the ocean between them.

 _“Dream, can I think about it?”_ The only hint of emotion in George’s stare was the rose in his eyes, face flat and near-stoic.

Dream hated that he said words that were memories and not produced. Words Dream had heard before, had been able to remember so vividly—as if caught on tape. He wanted to erase the echo of George’s tone, the tone that asked that question with such chiffon intent. The voice was white, but his implication was undeniably ebony.

False words were darker, though.

 _“Dream, I think I’d rather stay here.”_ It felt like merely an echo of George, though the voice was truly his. _“I like it in England. You’re not in England, so I like it here.”_

Dream’s mouth fell open again, begged to ask for an explanation, begged for better answers from George and more words to support them all. Though he wasn’t quite sure if that was what he really wanted, for he feared anything else to come out of the brunet’s mouth would be starless in hurt.

 _“I can see you from here,”_ George’s echoed voice spoke in earnest. _“But I can’t touch you. It’s better that way, isn’t it?”_

Maybe it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ow
> 
> also a quick self-promo :] I posted the first chapter of a Sapnap-centric fic "Born of Fire" just now so go read it if you want. it's about magic and evil and stuff and Karl, Dream, and George will all be there too  
> fun stuff, right?


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